How do you mentor other tech leads?

Question

Accepted Answer

Mentoring other TLs is **leadership at the next level**, you're no longer growing engineers, you're growing the people who grow engineers. The leverage is enormous, but the approach is different: you coach judgment, not technical skill, and you must let them lead their own way.

## How to mentor leads

```text
✓ Coach JUDGMENT, not answers — "how would you approach it?"
✓ Let them OWN their decisions — and their mistakes (within safe limits)
✓ Share frameworks and stories, not prescriptions
✓ Give feedback on their LEADERSHIP, not just their tech
✓ Help them navigate people/politics — the part nobody trained them for
✓ Create a peer network — leads learn enormously from each other
```

## Coach the decision, don't make it

When a TL brings you a problem, resist solving it. Ask how *they'd* handle it, probe the trade-offs, and let them decide, even if you'd choose differently. They learn judgment by exercising it. If you decide for them, you've taken their growth *and* their ownership.

## A concrete example

A new TL is struggling with an underperformer on their team. Don't take over the conversation. Walk them through how to approach it, role-play it, and let them have the conversation. They build a skill they'll use for the rest of their career.

## The hard part

Letting them make mistakes you can see coming, when the cost is recoverable. That discomfort is exactly where their growth happens. Rescuing them keeps them dependent.

## Why it matters

Growing leaders multiplies your impact across many teams at once, the highest-leverage thing a senior TL can do.

And an organization rich in capable leads is resilient: it doesn't depend on any single person, including you.